Art 3 is an artist run group, run by Peter Mountford and Jane Stothert. They have been running exhibitions at The Wine Gallery since September 2001.

Looking back over what we have achieved during this period the quality of exhibitions we have been able to put on has been increasingly encouraging. I say this particularly given the restrictions we work under which include; a small budget, limited time to prepare and change over the shows , the fact they we are operating in someone else's premises that is not a conventional Gallery space, and so on… We are also extremely grateful to the artists, who as well as producing and providing the artwork, undertake a chunk of the publicity and administration of the mailings themselves.

In '3 years of Art 3', we have attempted to represent as broader a cross section of the artists we have shown as possible. Also we have chosen those that we feel best encapsulate the type of imprint and growing reputation we are steadily developing in London. We left it open to the artists to select the work they wanted to show. In most cases they have chosen their newer work, although some (myself included) have mixed new work with that similar to what was in previous shows

Apart from Jane and myself, Jonet Harley-Peters was the first name on our list of potential exhibitors, as a founder member of Art 3. The 3 of us exhibited in our inaugural exhibition '3 forms of colour' which opened on the 1st October 2001. In truth we didn't formally launch Art 3 until 6 months after this show once we had fulfilled commitments inherited from the previous organisers. This show featured Tim Dean who exhibited (with Sebastiano Bonello) his richly textured surfaces that refer to archaic symbols and messages. Other particular highlights for me are-:

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  The two 'London Landscape' exhibitions in 2002 and 2003. Kitty Reford, represents the first show, and Jessica Shattock and Vanessa Sherry the second one. The latter was particularly important as it was our first experience of partnership work (with RBKC) and also the first sponsorship we obtained.
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  Colour By Numbers, is an on-going group project of mine- and I am currently negotiating a couple of shows for 2005/06. The first exhibition @ The Wine Gallery set the ball rolling in 2003 and featured myself, Steven Barratt and Chris Klein.
  

Other partnership shows include 'From the Slip to the Wall' with BNI -Carlos Dominguez represents that show, A South African Art Showcase with the South African Newspaper, Both of the above took place this past year. We have continued this approach with our sponsors for this exhibition Alter Ego, who specialise in design and design concepts.

Whilst initially putting together shows from artists we already knew, we have been increasingly able to attract artists from other sources as our profile has grown. By advertising in AN magazine (the artists trade journal) we obtained artists for both London landscape shows and for Colour by Numbers. We also found Letitia Tuntstall from an AN open submission. Others have come via sources such as the Battersea Art Fair, where first Saw Leonard Vucinic’s work and also others we unfortunately didn’t have room for in this exhbition

Of the solo shows, Geraldine Swayne's in September 2003 particularly stands out in my mind. Her haunting paintings and photographs, relating to Venetian ghost stories were not only haunting, but bizarrely uplifting too.

Our new Website www.art-3.co.uk (ofcourse the very place you are right now) is helping to raise our profile further, we have just moved the site from my own colourmount site, We are now utilising this facility to help market Art 3, as we strive now to expand the project out in to other venues within the central London area.

Pete Mountford
December 2004